The present invention relates to chemical reactors, and, in particular, to a device for loading the tubes of chemical reactors with catalyst.
In the past, many different types of devices have been used to assist in loading catalyst into reactor tubes. For example, various sleeves, templates, and vibrating machines have been used. Then, once the catalyst has been loaded, a stick is inserted into each tube to measure the distance from the top of the catalyst to the top of the reactor tube (the outage) to see whether that space or outage is within the desired range. If the outage is too large, additional catalyst is loaded and the outage is measured again. If the outage is too small, catalyst is vacuumed out of the tube and the outage is measured again.